Apple products, including the MacBook, are often described as “overpriced” since you can get a Windows laptop with similar performance for less, or at least that’s the claim. But, is this really true?

Sure, MacBooks Cost a Lot of Money

To be clear, there are plenty of MacBooks that have eye-watering price tags, especially if you get a little silly in configurator and start slapping storage, RAM, and extra cores into the mix. The cheapest MacBook as of this writing is around $700, which means there’s a huge gap under that price point where many Windows laptops fill a need at a budget level Apple does not cater for.

Then again, if you’ve not been keeping up with MacBooks, you may be shocked that you can buy a new MacBook for $700. Not only is it well under $1000, the M1 MacBook Air is still one of the best general-purpose laptops ever, despite being four years old at this point.

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Apple 2020 M1 MacBook Air

Quite possibly more computer than 99% of laptops buyers will ever need. The M1 Air is still just as impressive today as when it launched in 2020.

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The $1000 mark is, of course, where you’ll get the latest MacBook Air, and that’s where Apple will sell the most MacBooks. So, while $6000 MacBooks exist, they are bought by a tiny percentage of MacBook users, and so the “real” price of a MacBook today is around $1000 off the shelf.

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MacBook Air (M2) 13-inch

$799 $999 Save $200

The MacBook Air 13-inch offers an excellent balance of portability, performance, and affordability, with the M2 and M3 versions providing great value and ample options for customization. Whether you choose the M2 or M3, you can expect a high-quality experience with features that cater to everyday productivity and more advanced needs.

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You’ll have no trouble finding comparable Windows laptops at that price, and I would argue that, in general, a $1000 Windows laptop represents worse value overall than a MacBook Air, but I’ll get to that.

Quality of Life Is Worth Something

It’s a common approach online to look at the specs of a Mac and then pull up the cheapest Windows laptop someone can find with similar performance for less money. Sometimes it’s not even a performance comparison, but just looking at raw numbers such as the amount of RAM or CPU cores. Either way, looking at performance specifications is only a small part of the value represented by a Mac.

Other factors, such as the chassis material, size, weight, thermals, battery life, and other laptop attributes that influence the day-to-day experience of the machine can’t be ignored in this context. This is a case of two groups of laptop buyers who simply value different things in their computers.

And, don’t forget about all-important peripherals. There are Windows laptops at twice the price of a base MacBook Air with much worse screens, speakers, keyboards, and trackpads. These are the devices through which you interface with the computer. It doesn’t matter much that you’ve got good components under the hood, when actually using the device doesn’t feel great.

For me personally, a big reason I now mainly work with Mac is that my laptop is how I earn a living, and in the almost six years since I’ve switched I have never had a single minute of downtime. Prior to that, my Windows laptop would have some sort of Windows-related issue at least once a week. The lost productivity in a single month alone was more than a MacBook Air, so it would have been more expensive not to switch to Mac in my specific case.

The “Free” Apple Software Is Worth Real Money

Windows costs money, the Microsoft Office Suite costs money, the apps you need to get work done on your laptop generally aren’t free. It’s easy to forget that Apple includes a full productivity suite with macOS, as well as macOS itself included in the price of a MacBook. GarageBand is a genuinely excellent audio production app, and iMovie is more video editor than the majority of people need.

A Microsoft 365 Individual subscription is $69.99 a year, but to be fair, let’s deduct $9.99 for 2TB iCloud Storage. In fact, that’s to the benefit of Microsoft, since they only include 1TB in their subscription. If you own your laptop for five years (which is something you can actually do with a MacBook) that’s $300 in hidden costs saved. Of course, you can buy Office standalone for $150 with no feature updates, but either way, that’s something you need to add to the price of your Windows laptop.

The manufacturer of the Windows laptop also has to pay for a Windows license, albeit heavily discounted. That’s money that could have gone to a better screen or speakers, for example. Apple owns its operating system and doesn’t have to make a profit on it specifically, just on the laptop as a whole.

If you have to use Office whether you are on a Mac or Windows PC, the point is moot of course, and there are free open source suites as well. However the point is that you are not just paying for hardware when you buy a MacBook, but a substantial amount of software too.

But Apple Does Have an Upgrade Pricing Problem

There is one huge fly in the ointment when it comes to MacBooks, or any Mac for that matter—upgrades.

With Windows laptops you can often (but not always) upgrade the RAM and storage later. However, with modern Apple Silicon MacBooks, you need to finalize your specs at the point where you check out. No takesies-backsies!

Want 8GB of additional RAM? That’ll be $200. Need 512GB more of storage space? That’ll be $200.

It’s far too easy to spec up a basic MacBook into something that costs as much as a nice used car. Heck, a nice new car if you really go wild. The profit margins on those upgrades must be (and I’m guessing here) absolutely staggering. This is why it’s usually best to look for the base model MacBook that will do the job for you, rather than buying a lower-end model and ticking those upgrade boxes.

The good news is that, in general, Apple is pretty good at offering adequate base model specifications, and the dreaded 8GB of RAM has now ended for newer models. So, in most cases, you won’t have to deal with this issue, but it’s a completely legitimate criticism of how the company can gouge certain customers for more cash.

The reality is that, just like Windows laptops, there are MacBooks that represent good value and those that don’t. However, it’s not hard to figure out what you’re paying for when you get a MacBook, unless your definition of value is so narrow that it begins and ends on a spec sheet.